Language Acquisition and Corrective Feedback

Corrective feedback has been in the focus of research in SLA during the last years and has become an important part in learners’ language acquisition. Ellis (1994) referred to feedback as “the information given to learners which they can use to revise their interlanguage.” He also distinguishes two different kinds of feedback, positive and negative feedback; positive feedback has to do with the information that indicates that a hypothesis is incorrect.

Ellis also mentioned some other forms of feedback such as direct or correction, indirect or the request for conformation, on-record which supplies ‘direct negative evidence’, and off-record which supplies ‘indirect negative feedback’; the negative evidence or feedback has to do with information about ungrammaticality.

If corrective feedback is sufficiently salient to enable learners to notice the gap between their interlanguage forms and target language forms, the resulting cognitive comparison may trigger a destabilization and restructuring of the target language grammar (Ellis, 1994).

Chaudron (1988) has pointed out that corrective feedback incorporates different layers of meaning. Chaudron consider the treatment of error is simply “any teacher behavior following an error that minimally attempts to inform the learner the fact of error” and finally “there is “the true” correction which succeeds in modifying the learner’s interlanguage so that the error is eliminated from further production”.

In the view of Chaudroncited in El Tatawy (2002) the information learners get from corrective feedback allows them to “confirm, disconfirm, and possibly modify the hypothetical, transitional rules of their developing grammars.”

Lightbown and Spada (1999) cited in El Tatawy (2002) define corrective feedback as: “Any indication to the learners that their use of the target language is incorrect.”

Schachter (1991) cited in El Tatawy (2001) stated that the feedback can be explicit, that is grammatical explanation or overt error correction, or implicit. Implicit correction can be done using the following techniques “confirmation checks, repetitions, recasts, clarification requests, silence, and even facial expressions that express confusion.” (Schachter (1991) cited in El Tatawy (2001))

Tedick and Gortari (1998) summarize different types of corrective feedback:

1. Explicit correction. When the teacher provides direct corrective feedback to the learner after s/he has made any mistake

S: [...] the coyote, the bison and the gr...grane. (phonological error)

T: And the crane. We say crane.

2. Recast. The teacher indirectly provides corrective feedback to the learners, but tries to reformulate the utterance.

S: You is a very good teacher. (grammatical error)

T: You are a good teacher. Good.

3. Clarification request. The teacher uses some phrases such as "Excuse me?